


for you/not me

by satelliteinasupernova



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Mystery, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 08:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20863430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satelliteinasupernova/pseuds/satelliteinasupernova
Summary: Jughead had been standing in front of one photograph for the past thirty minutes. The class assignment was to wander the halls of the museum and find a piece that sparked an interest in him. Then, of course, write up two pages on his observations.Jughead had only made it two rooms in before he found his subject.





	1. PART ONE

**Author's Note:**

> Part one is based on the prompt: “You’re so clingy, i love it.”
> 
> Part two is based on the prompt: “I can’t believe I got the first date, let alone a year.”
> 
> Originally posted as part of my [assortment of short works!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748437/chapters/49298336)
> 
> Thanks to arsenicpanda for the beta!

Jughead had been standing in front of one photograph for the past thirty minutes. The class assignment was to wander the halls of the museum and find a piece that sparked an interest in him. Then, of course, write up two pages on his observations.

Jughead had only made it two rooms in before he found his subject.

The image was of a series of mirror reflections. It looked as if the photographer had placed two mirrors in front of each other and then taken a photograph of the two mirrors capturing each other in infinite reflections. In the mirror reflection was the back of a girl, repeated again and again until her reflection was too small to see, possibly hundreds of reflections. In each of those reflections, her clothing was different.

It was as if he was watching someone’s life passing all in one still photograph. It was digitally manipulated, of course, but the image of the girl was so vivid it felt like he could reach out and touch her shoulder.

His project partner interrupted his train of thought, “Dude, you’re still here? There’s a room down the hall that’s entirely nude photos.” 

Jughead glanced up at him, annoyed. “I’m sure they’re great, but I’m doing this one.” He motioned to the small notepad in his hand where he had been jotting down observations.

His partner, Reggie, took a step back and considered the photograph. He looked thoughtful as he said, “Do you think this is about how we take too many selfies?” 

That was one interpretation, Jughead supposed.

Jughead nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt someone take hold of his arm. He twisted around, intending to push them off, but he stopped dead as soon as he caught a glimpse of her. The first thing he registered was that she was beautiful. The second thing he registered were her eyes. They were a bright green and were looking up at him with a friendly familiarity.

“This is our favorite photograph here,” she told Reggie, kindly.

Reggie laughed and smacked Jughead on his shoulder. “You didn’t tell me this was about your girlfriend.” He brought his voice down as he added, “We’ve all been there, man.” With that, he winked and then wandered back over to the next room.

Jughead suddenly felt very out of his element.

“Uh, thanks?” Jughead said to the woman still holding onto his arm. Was that what he was supposed to say in circumstances like this?

She didn’t respond; instead, she was looking back at the photograph. Looking thoughtful, she leaned her head against his shoulder. Jughead felt frozen in place, afraid if he moved at all, she would vanish just as quickly as she appeared. 

“You’re going to write about it for class?” she asked.

“Yeah…” he replied. “Do you think I should?” he added, not sure why he was starting to feel a desperate need for her approval.

“I think it’s a great idea. As long as I get to read it, Jug,” she said, turning to him with a smile.

When she casually said his name, the panic he felt was visceral. He felt it travel up his body in waves. Did she know him? Was he supposed to know her?

He didn’t want to ask. He wanted to keep playing his part in this role she had concocted, but he needed to know.

“Do I… know you?” He bit at his lip as he waited for her answer. Expecting her to be insulted. Upset. Or maybe for her to laugh at him.

Instead, she just studied him. “I guess not,” she said eventually. “This must be the first time we’ve met.”

“Do you know me?” he asked, numbly.

This time she did laugh. “I’d like to think I know you pretty well by now, Jughead Jones, but I’ve had the opportunity to meet you plenty of times.”

This woman was an enigma.

She pulled away from him then, and as soon as she did, he missed her presence beside him painfully.

“I’m Betty Cooper,” she said, looking at him with a soft smile. “If you see me again, will you come talk to me?”

“Of course,” he answered without a moment’s pause. 

Her smile bloomed into a look of relief. She started walking backwards away from him but continued to lock her eyes with his. “If you find yourself wanting to see me, This is a good spot.”

“I will,” he answered, feeling helpless as she stepped further away from him. “I will, Betty,” he added, just so he could feel what it was like to say her name.

“See you soon, Jug,” she said, and then turned around, leaving him there, certain then that his life had completely changed.


	2. PART TWO

Betty had explained it to him early in their relationship (for him, not her). “I just… don’t experience time the way you do. When I wake up every morning, the day is different, but it’s out of order. Usually it’s somewhere around the same year, but not always. I’ve woken up back to my childhood. I’ve woken up far into the future.”

“What happens in the future?” he asked, letting his curiosity get the better of him.

She had given him a look. “You don’t really want to know that. I’m not going to take the future away from you, Jughead.”

Betty did keep some notes to help her stay on track from day to day, but she intentionally kept them vague. 

“When I was young I was meticulous about it,” she explained to him, “I wrote down every minute detail of my life so I could fill in the gaps like I thought I should, but…” She sighed so heavily then that he thought he felt it himself. “I wasn’t actually experiencing my life that way. I was just… filling it in.”

She still kept things strictly organized, but now those rules had to do with what she allowed herself to know ahead of time. He had seen the sticky notes she left on her bedside table. “Work at coffee shop” or “Call Mom. Just let her talk.” Sometimes it was “Go to the museum near campus,” which really meant “Go see Jug.”

He had started to document things on his own end. He had a five-year planner exclusively used to document the days that he met up with Betty. 

Betty had let him fill out some of the days on her personal calendar. The notes didn’t say to meet him specifically, instead it just gave a hint to where she should visit that day. 

Jughead had to constantly be on his toes to follow the unsteady rhythm of their relationship. On any given day, she would look at him like she had loved him for years; on others, she would smile shyly when he reached for her hand. 

He loved seeing Betty at any time, at any part of their relationship, but he especially loved getting to see her when their relationship was still young (for her, not him). She was always so openly thrilled to have someone who already understood her and how her life worked. He had never really found himself in the position to be an anchor for someone else before. He was the constant in Betty’s ever-changing life, and he treasured every moment of it. Sometimes the love he had for her felt so intensely overpowering that he didn’t know how it managed to stay contained within his own body.

It was difficult to put any sort of timestamp to their relationship, but according to the calendar he kept, they had (for him, not for her) officially met 365 times. For him, it had been two and a half years, but for them, this was the closest thing they had to a one year anniversary.

He wanted to marry her.   
He also didn’t know how she would feel about the idea of being married. Not just to him, but to anyone at all. 

He knew, for him, it would be like being married to the tide. But, God, he wanted to. There was nothing on earth he wanted more than her.

They had never lived together, but he knew what it was like to wake up beside her. They always stayed at her apartment so she wouldn’t be too disoriented in the morning. As soon as her alarm went off, he would pull himself awake so that he could be there to anchor her. His voice still rough from sleep, he would tell her the day of the week, what her current job was, and if she had work that day. Some mornings she responded to him like this routine was normal; other times, she would look like she was about to cry, and curl up to him so close that he could feel her heartbeat against his chest.

Determining where their physical relationship stood was a challenge for him, so he had taken to letting Betty be the one to take the lead.

“Have we had sex yet?” she’d asked him one night when they were standing in the doorway of her apartment, her hands hooked around the lapels of his jacket. 

“Yes,” he’d answered, knowing she trusted him to tell the truth. By then, they had slept together plenty of times (For him, apparently not for her).

“Will you show me?” she’d asked, leaning slightly forward, her eyes blinking up at him and her mouth set to a coyish pout. Under his skin, his blood had felt like it was fizzing in his veins.

There was nothing quite like dating Betty Cooper.

He wanted to know what being married to her would be like.

* * *

  
  


Jughead heard the ring of the diner bell as Betty entered through the door. This had become one of their regular meet up spots aside from the museum where he had first met her. It wasn’t as good as Pop’s back at home in Riverdale, but the food was decent, and the menu was ten pages long. Jughead had yet to eat the same thing twice.

Jughead waved at Betty when she glanced around the diner. She blinked at him and headed over, delicately sitting across from him in the booth.

“Hey Betts.” He was already nervous, his body humming with energy, “There’s something I want to talk to you about.” He knew it would be better to wait until they had settled in before starting this conversation, but sitting through the entirety of breakfast keeping his thoughts to himself sounded like the worst kind of torture.

“Oh, okay,” she said. 

Instantly, he knew something was wrong. He recognized her tone. It was the one she used when she was having trouble reading the room and was waiting for others to fill in the gaps. During those moments when her voice sounded uncharacteristically passive, Jughead knew to fill things in for her.

The problem was, in this case, he wasn’t sure what she needed to know.

He glanced around the diner. “Have you been here before, Betty?”

“Hmm,” she said noncommittally, avoiding giving an answer.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, he realized there was only one other factor that could possibly be throwing her off.

“This is your first time meeting me,” he stated, not bothering to frame it as a question.

“Is it?” she answered, unsure.

“For you, not for me,” he said.

Recognition dawned on her face then. “So you know me pretty well.” _ You know what my life is like _, her words implied. 

She was looking at him expectantly, but he wasn’t sure what he could say. _ I’m your boyfriend _ was far more information that she would typically allow. _ Hi Betty, I’m Jughead Jones and I’m helplessly in love with you _ didn’t seem much better.

“My name’s Jughead,” he said, keeping it simple.

“Really?” she asked, barely hiding her amusement.

He rolled his eyes. Of course, even the woman of his dreams wasn’t beyond laughing at his name. “Yes.”

After studying him for a moment, she said, “What were you going to tell me?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, cautiously.

“Why not?” she responded without even a blink.

“Because,” he said, wincing through his words, “It’s more than you want to know right now.”

“But I’m the one who’s asking Jughead,” she insisted, “And I’m deciding that I want to know.”

Jughead covered his face with his hand, “I can’t, Betty. If I say this now, it’ll just ruin everything.”

Betty was quiet. She didn’t speak again until the waiter had come by for their order and dropped off their drinks. Coffee for him, tea for her.

Before speaking, she put her hands out on the table and folded them in front of her. “Has anything I’ve said to you before given you the feeling that I wasn’t comfortable with what you’ve been planning to say today?”

“That assumes I say it,” he said miserably.

“I think you say it,” she said with confidence, “because I think this is the beginning for me.”

He finally glanced back up at her. This wasn’t the dance he was used to having with her. He was used to playing by the rules, following her steps. Now she was asking him to take the lead.

“I wanted,” he started, his voice quivering. He reached over and took a sip of his coffee, trying to steady himself. It wouldn’t be fair to her to say this without at least some conviction. At the very least, to express his confidence in how he felt. He took a deep breath and sat up, meeting her eyes.

“I want to marry you, Betty. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve wanted more in my life.”

Her response was a smile. It was a messy, crumpled smile that looked something like happiness and something like understanding. 

“How long have we known each other, Jughead?” she asked, the way she said his name sounded like she had known it her entire life.

“For you or for me?”

“For us,” she clarified.

“It’s our anniversary, Betty. We’ve officially known each other for 365 days.”

Her eyes had gone glossy. She was blinking to hold back her tears. It was a few heartbeats before she found her words, her voice watery with tears but confident, “I think I’m going to marry you, Jughead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Points to those who read the original prompt fill and guessed at Doctor Who as an influence here! I wrote this fic after suddenly remembering how much potential the concept around River Song had, specifically the idea of falling in love out of order. (As with most Moffat concepts, potential wasted)
> 
> This story concept is a bit of a blender of influences including: Arrival, Momento, and this book I read years ago called Everyday, about an entity that wakes up everyday in a new body. The book... wasn't particularly good, but the concept stuck with me at least (apparently it's a movie now???)
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed this strange little fic! I'm pretty happy with it!


End file.
